Page 36 - Studio International - May June 1975

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Activity of Criticism

Part 2

Interviews with Roberta Smith and Lucy Lippard
by James and Caryn Faure Walker.

This is the second of a two-part series of interviews with
critics in New York, taped at the end of 1974.

Roberta Smith more involved with its own material, `I don't think it would be entirely
that's flat in one way, that does very accessible. I just don't think that art at
`How did you start writing deliberate things with space. Obviously present is widely accessible. It's not
criticism?' there is going to be space in paintings, involved with that kind of thing . . . It's
'I like to write and I was very involved but there has to be a particular kind of public in some ways, but it's personal.
with art. I used to read Art Forum tension between what it is physically This is one of the things that has come
and was often enraged. I decided I could and how it works with space. You can't out of the abstract geometric art that
do better. just go back to work — I hate to say it — America has produced, that it really is
`I think the art that was really work that acts as if Pollock never basically personal. It's not involved
important to me, and in some ways the existed. I'm interested in a certain use of with larger systems or general ideas,
writing, was so-called minimal art, material, an ordering of it, a certain unlike most previous geometric art.'
people like Judd and Flavin, that relationship between the way the thing is `How do you account for this split
generation. I think that critics have to be made and the end result you're looking between minimal art and field
very careful to figure out how they at.' painting?'
maintain themselves, how they extend `How do you feel about lyrical `It probably isn't that extreme. There's
themselves, how they go beyond that a kind of block that, say, Greenberg has,
first generation. It's hard for me to say abstraction?' because I think Judd is everything
`I see that work as not needing to be
(at this point I don't feel that I am done. It just doesn't seem forceful, that Greenberg thought great art was :
beyond it), but what I've gotten from it is very abstract, visual, very committed
a belief in a visual experience, that I can compelling. It seems like a kind of work, it's got a very coherent
salon painting, that there are a number of
work back and forth from. For example conventions that are available for all development. It's not superficially
certain minimal sculpture gives me an artists. The similarity of all that kind of decorative. It's involved with visual
understanding of Abstract Expressionism. art is very suspect. At times it becomes aspects like scale, and relationships
`That's the major challenge of a critic, difficult to distinguish between Olitski, between colour and surface, that it seems
like it is with any artist, how do you Bannard, or Christensen. It seems very he would like. It's not anti-art, it's not
maintain yourself, how can you be clear. vague and doesn't mean much. It's literary. The same goes for Flavin. I don't
How do you not end up like Greenberg, vague perceptually, formally there's know how to account for the mutual split.
or to a certain extent like Rosenberg. nothing that really comes across, that hits `I feel my first obligation is to work
I just feel that at a certain point they
stopped looking, and stopped thinking, me visually. I know there are formal that is less known. That extends back.
qualities about surface that I can believe
Obviously we still have a lot to say about
and they couldn't use what they learnt about other work, but that seem very Abstract Expressionism. I think that
from the art they loved, they couldn't hollow when you talk about their there are artists now who are doing
extend it. There's almost no critic that paintings. interesting painting that relates to it,
this hasn't happened to. You have to and it's not lyrical abstraction. Ron
stick with the art you first like, keep `Formal description, in fact, has Gorchov's and Ralph Humphrey's
re-evaluating it, and keep re-applying it. immense possibilities. The meaning of a paintings are examples. Maybe we're
It's a tragedy what's happened with work of art is really in front of your eyes. going to get back to talking about
Greenberg, the kind of art he's ended up It's just a process of training yourself to
supporting, the kind of effect he's had look, and training yourself to talk about content in minimal art in a way we
haven't before. A lot of those artists were
on certain artists. I feel very naive about what you see. It's just incredible. probably taken too completely at their
it, my feeling is you try and remain as Everybody objects to formalism, but I word.'
open as possible, and be as precise as you think you start with that perception.
can about each individual experience.' `I think art is something you look at, `Is the most intense part of writing
you see, and it moves your mind. That's criticism the moment when you
`Don't you have a historical view of why I'm a critic. It starts me thinking make the judgement?'
things ?' before I know it. It just happens very `In some ways, yes, because it is very
`There are developments and you fast. But I do object to art that doesn't delicate.
can't go back. But it is very complicated; give you an immediate handle, in a visual `You have a responsibility to say how
I think the situation is as open as artists way. If it seems unnecessarily difficult good something is. I think about it as
can make it, they convince by the or obscure, I find it pretentious. much as I can. It's very complicated.
viability of their work. A good example is Something has to engage you, and that by All art basically has holes in it. Nothing is
Philip Guston's recent paintings which and large happens in an inexplicable absolutely going to do everything. There
have this crazy, cartoony imagery and perceptual way, that makes you start are kinds of limits, this comes back to
might seem like a regression in terms of analysing it, and that intrigues you. intention in a way. I would like to see my
his earlier work. So you can't avoid his Art that I find uninteresting, from my writing get less involved with a very
compulsion to do those paintings, their point of view, doesn't involve me for a simplistic "this is good and this is bad",
strength and his maturity as a painter. number of reasons — it doesn't seem rich because I think it is a little ungenerous.
I'm not interested in a lot of enough, human enough, accessible I would like to get that quality of
abstraction that is latently naturalistic. enough.' moderation into my writing where
I would rather look at an obvious image `Accessible to someone outside the people can see that I'm really turning
or at a completely abstract art that is art world?' something over and examining it,
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